Original content and news about the autism epidemic from the perspective that autism is treatable. Anaylsis of current media treatment of autism and the environmental causes of autism.

Thanks to E. White for the latest five-star Amazon review of our book, Vaccines. 2.0: "This is a must read for any potential or new parents. I found this one of the best books for information I was hungering for....

Olmsted's Original UPI Series

Editor's Note: The enlightened voters of Oak Park, Ill. -- my home town! -- passed a resolution Tuesday asserting that residents should be given information on vaccine ingredients including thimerosal. This account by the Chicago Trib -- our least favorite newspaper -- quotes a dismissive AAP spokesman: "The mercury amount referred to in the question is a different chemical form from the mercury formerly used in vaccines. ... 'So this is apples and oranges and appears designed to inflame. The toxicity issues are theoretical and have been robustly rebutted.'" Geez, maybe Tribune reporters and public health officials are the ones who should be reading the product labels. Anyway, this vote is a great in-your-face moment that shows people concerned about vaccine safety can make themselves heard on election day. Let's hope it's the start of something big. Kudos to Barbara Mullarkey, an Oak Park resident and friend of Age of Autism who engineered the success. -- Dan Olmsted.

After receiving multiple vaccines, she developed long term seizures, which is a known symptom of the MMR vaccine. Her other symptoms were those of inflammation of the brain - encephalitis.

The case is painted as if the genetic disorder condition she suffered from was the underlying cause of the reaction with the vaccine. But, I think it is more accurate to say that the vaccine was what caused the genetic mutation in the first place.

Poling's case is a perfect example of how autism is not, in fact, caused by mercury.
Those that promote mercury as the sole cause of autism fail to realize that it's the vaccine as a whole that's causing autism, or, more accurately, "the subacute sclerosing panencephalitis from the demyelination following vaccine induced encephalitis." (www.drcarley.com)

The MMR vaccine, for example, does not have any mercury in it...yet, there are numerous cases of children receiving the vaccine, and within a few hours or days, becoming very ill with seizures, fevers, etc..and, consequently, they incur substantial neurological damage.

Bondarev, VN et al, “The Changes of the Nervous System in Children After Vaccination”, Pediatria, Jun 1969; 48:20-24.

Thousands of cases are waiting to be heard in the courts and almost all will be dismissed. Poling's case, however, was the first ever to win, and it shows that there is indeed a connection between autism and vaccines.

Please do your homework, read the latest scientific research - not just a study or 2 before you want to tell all parents what they should or should not do. Please know that it isn't just infants who have adverse reactions to vaccines & it's just not the mercury - aluminum, msg, formaldehyde aren't ingredients that should be put into our children. Our son was 10 when he developed autistic symptoms from the hep B vaccine. Twelve years later & $900K later he's almost healthy. At the time he was vaccinated, (according to the IL Dept of Health) there were more children with adverse reactions to the vaccine that there were with Hep B disease.(he was vaccinated the first month the hep b vaccine was mandated, so the low numbers of the disease are not attributed to the vaccine) The only ones that benefited from this vaccine was the drug companies - in other words, FOLLOW the MONEY!

I've been able to speak with many nonvaccinating parents - one common thread they all have - their kids are healthy - very few colds, hardly any ear infections, and no allergies. I only wish I had been as wise.

Theodora,
Please do not mistake our mission to bring attention to the suffering of our children, who cannot communicate their pain and struggles, for trivialization of your very real disability. In advocating for the recognition of our children's issues we are also advocating for you too.

Please be aware of how important your voice is in this effort. You are a tremendous help to the parents who have children who are severely disabled by this condition. You have the personal insight and can give voice to many of the problems our children suffer but we may be unable to understand because of their lack of communication. Believe me, we value your perspective and sympathize with what you're going through too.

Your focus with regard to lack of support should be with those people who claim to be on the spectrum and advocate a position that the symptoms of ASD are not disabling, but ONLY a difference to be acknowledged and accepted. They are the ones that are interferring with recognition of your struggles. It is their perspective that seems to me portrayed most often in the media, to the detriment of the public recognizing the seriousness of our message. And that ultimately interferes with getting the appropriate attention and treatment for your and our children's debilitating and painful struggles.

Perhaps I wasn’t clear. The underestimation I was speaking of was for adverse reactions to vaccines. If you don’t know what the true rate of all adverse reactions to vaccines, then you cannot possibly make an accurate assessment of risk vs. benefits of vaccination. If it is not mandatory to report adverse reactions, if doctors are not aware of all possible reactions, if doctors refuse to acknowledge possible adverse reactions and report them, or if doctors cannot be bothered to file the paperwork, you cannot know what the real rate of risks are.

You also seem stuck on comparing risk of infection to risk of autism instead of risk of complications from disease to risk of adverse effects of vaccines. As MinorityView pointed out, many people came through infection of polio without any issues and gained life long immunity. I know this to be true from family history. My grandparents and their 10 children were exposed to polio. Out of the 12, only my grandmother suffered as her leg atrophied. (And to hear my mother tell it, the doctor told my grandmother to get out of bed and move about but she refused and the leg atrophied.) All of my siblings and peers had chickenpox, measles, mumps, etc and came through it; and yes I realize that complications can happen however the point being that risk of infection does not mean automatic complications.

I know it is not intentional, but everytime I am here and I hear how much less of a problem Asperger's is, or how less severe it is, I cringe.

I feel as though our struggles don't even count! Despite how dibilitating they can be, what damage they cause, we are less of a problem?

I have to spend some much of my mental and physical energy every single day just to appear acceptable to the rest of society! I have to minimize my ticks, hold down meltdowns, bite down when sensory issues are overwhelming me.

And I can do that because I GOT THE HELP!! Many of us do not. We sit at home by ourselves everyday, in a small room, sometimes with a computer as our outside link, sometimes not!

Everyday, walking out of my door is like walking into another country who's language I can't read, nor understand, and who's culture baffles, confuses, and fustrates me to the point of anger and exhaustion.

I know it is unintentional. I also realize that in comparioson to what I have seen with my own eyes in the hab centers, I should feel greatful!

But I don't want those of us with AS and the very REAL and quite DIBILITATING issues that we face everyday of our lives and the struggles we go through to be trivilized either.

We are to often invisable, not only to the outside world, but to those within our own community who dimiss us because we are not "severe enough".

There are thousands falling through the cracks right now, who have infinite potential who will not recieve help because of those two words!

And those who call us a personality difference aren't helping matters! Introvert and Extrovert is a personality difference! Someone who self harms because the room is painted in bright yellow and they just can't take it, that's a disability!!

And by not calling a spade a spade you contribute to those numbers that continue to fall through the cracks because they are now convinced they don't need the help!

So either by trivilization, or other means, we stay behind closed doors.

This is not meant to offend. I only wish to have the help of such passionate warriors as yourselves to HELP US TOO!!!! Please don't forget us!! WE NEED YOU TOO!!!

Robert, you never responded to the question samaxtics posed: "Can you explain why you don't want patients to have this info? As Theodora already pointed out, when you have a prescription filled you get a print out of information that you can peruse before you take the meds. Why should vaccines be any different?"

You believe the cost/benefit ratio for vaccines (all lumped together, I notice, even though you only did the calculation for polio, and not for other diseases like chicken pox, which have a near-zero fatality rate) means that your child would be better off being vaccinated than not. Fine. Why shouldn't other parents have all the information needed to make that decision for themselves? I can think of no other medication given to a healthy individual that is stripped of its ingredients list before being handed to a patient. Imagine if doctors gave out birth control pills with all the packaging removed--wouldn't there be a public outcry?

So what do you say to the question from Samaxtics? Why should you decide what information other parents are given by their doctors, just because you've made your own calculation for your own child?

There is a big mistake in the polio stat. Simply put, most people who got polio survived with no symptoms at all, a few had mild symptoms (sort of like stomach flu) and a very tiny percentage actually because seriously ill or died. Once someone had gone through polio naturally they became immune. So the risk didn't remain level. One of the reasons that polio epidemics tended to have a rise and fall was that more and more of the population would become immune.

So you don't get a continuous life-long risk. For most people the risk came and went without a visible bump in their lives.

Other responses:
Dan – I’m in Oak Park, IL. I’m don’t think the data I cited have been superseded (I couldn’t find any retractions, recounts, etc. that suggest they are inaccurate or have been replaced). Perhaps, like Theresa, you were objecting to lifetime risk data that is not sensitive to recent increases in prevalence? Anyways, if you want to supply information, links, citations that would support your point I’d be glad to check them out.

Samaxtics – I’d agree that data direct from pharmaceuticals would be biased towards underestimating impact. But here we’re tallying actual reported cases of autism and ASD, culled from applications for special education, medical services, etc. I don’t think the pharmaceutical industry could have an impact on this data.

I had discussions like this in our birth group 3 years ago, and know this is a sensitive and emotional topic. If anything I’ve written here has upset you or offended you, I sincerely apologize. I know that each of us is straining to make the best decisions for our children. Regardless of your opinion on this issue, I wish you the best.

First, thank you to the editors for allowing this discussion to continue here. I hope they won’t mind if I keep the ball rolling with a response to the latest batch of comments.

Theresa objects to using total lifetime risk of autism as a term of comparison for Polio risk, as the incidence has been steadily increasing. She’s correct; the total prevalence rate I’m citing represents the average risk over a considerable period of time, so it certainly underestimates the risks a child born today would face.

Taking Theresa’s criticism into account, here’s another pass at this back-of-then envelope calculation.

First, I tried to identify risk of autism for the most recent cohort available. I found a report from Rice et al. (2009) reporting on the 2006 data for autism-spectrum disorders for 8-year olds collected by the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network Surveillance. They estimate that prevalence for this cohort is a whopping 0.9% (about 1:100). Unfortunately, this report does not distinguish between autism disorder and less severe problems such as Asperger disorder. They do, however, report that only 41% of those diagnosed with ASD had cognitive impairment (IQ < 70). Based on the IQ data, I think it’s fair to suggest that the prevalence of autism disorder is about half the total rate of ASD, or 1:200. If you disagree or don’t like my narrowing of the question down to this category, just double my estimates along the line for autism.

Now, what % of these autism cases might be vaccine-induced? The available evidence suggests 0%, but I’m not going to start that fight here. Let’s say, as an initial estimate, that 10% of autism cases are vaccine-induced (you can re-run this calculation with your own estimate). Under this scenario, there is a total risk of vaccine-induced autism of 1:2000 for children born in 1998 (and reaching 8 years old for this 2006 study).

This would, indeed, be quite a risk, but it still doesn’t stand up well to the risk of infectious disease. Polio, as I’ve cited, had a peak infection rate of 1/10,000 per year (Trevelyan et al. 2005). So in 5 years at the peak of the Polio crisis, the cumulative risk of infection would be equivalent to the current cohort’s risk of autism. For children living more than 5 years at the peak of the Polio crisis, the risks of the vaccine would be less than the risks of autism.

If you believe the vaccines cause more than 10% of autism, the break-even point will be later for the polio vaccine. But even if you think that *every* case of autism is due to vaccines, the polio vaccine would still carry a lower risk after 50 years of life (or 100 years if you want to count every single case of ASD as vaccine-induced). Also note that this comparison is very unfair to vaccine—we’re tallying maximal autism impact from all vaccines against the reduced infection risk of just a single vaccine. Although this is back-of-the-envelope, it suggests to me that even the worst-case scenario for a vaccine-autism link would not outweigh the benefits vaccines hold in preventing infectious disease.

Robert, if the under-reporting of adverse effects for vaccination is possibly as high as 99%, won't that skew your stats? You claim to be looking at all the best information but are you aware that pharmaceutical companies have been found to hide negative outcome concerning their products?

Furthermore, that mankind still walks this planet attests to the fact that infection does not automatically equal adverse outcome. To be true, your comparison should be adverse effect of disease to risk of autism or other adverse effects of vaccination.

Can you explain why you don't want patients to have this info? As Theodora already pointed out, when you have a prescription filled you get a print out of information that you can peruse before you take the meds. Why should vaccines be any different?

"Lifetime risk" ... hahahahaha. Too funny, Bob. You had me going for a minute there. Sure, you can average the 1% incidence for kids born in the 1990s with a 1-in-10,000 incidence for people born in the 1950s and come up wish an incidence for the overall population--maybe it's true that the current autism incidence in the entire population is 1 to 2 per 1000. That's not a true lifetime risk, however, for a disorder whose incidence has increased with each succeeding generation that has been measured. (Try this little test: would you take the overall incidence of peanut allergy in the population and call that number the "lifetime risk" for a child born today? I don't think so. It's another disorder whose incidence is increasing, and for the most part, it doesn't go away. Once you have it, you have it.)

bob, what planet are you on? this recitation of dated and superseded autism rates makes you look like you don't have a clue of the dimensions of the problem and simply lack the information base to opine on this any further.

I think you've misunderstood the figures I mentioned and cited. I stated that the "total lifetime risk of autism is currently 1 to 2 per 1000". You've countered with a rate for autism in children in the 1990s of 1 in 100. I think you can see that these numbers measure different things--you're comparing apples and oranges.

Furthermore, the figure I cited is not a lie. It comes from a 2007 review, "The Epidemiology of Autism" by Newschaffer et al. Here is the relevant passage:

Autistic disorder prevalence estimates centered at 5 per 10,000 in the 1960s and 1970s, tended to be 10 per 10,000 in the 1980s, and have been highly variable since the 1990s with reported estimates as low as 5 per 10,000 and as high as 72 per 10,000 (76, 152). Several factors associated with the variation in estimates have been noted, including the size and composition of the population studied, the means of conducting initial screening for cases, and the methods and criteria by which cases are confirmed (48, 78, 178). Most recent reviews of the prevalence literature tend to conclude that prevalence of autistic disorder falls between 10 and 20 per 10,000.

I went with what seems to be the emerging consensus of 1-2:1000, but perhaps should have aknowledged the considerable variability between different studies. Also, rates of the combined autism spectrum disorders are much higher than these figures, which are only for autism disorder.

If you'd like a pdf of the article, I'd be glad to provide it (it's behind a pay wall).

My method of comparison is crude, but reasonable, I think--take the annual infection rate for polio in the U.S. at its peak and multiply by number of years of life to get a rough estimate of cumulative lifetime risk that can be compared to the cumulative lifetime risk for autism. By this (admittedly imperfect) method, even if *all* occurances of autism were due to vaccines, this risk is outweighed by protection from polio alone for any child planning on living more than 10-20 years of life. This is very 'back-of-the-envelope', but I think it is a reasonable guesstimate.

Do you have a citation to rates of autism for children in the 1990s? I couldn't find that--the number you cite sounds closer to some recent estimates of autism spectrum disorders.

I would like to take you up on your guarantee that the risks of vaccine-induced autism are much greater than all the other benefits of vaccines. I have a proposal to make for us each to put up some money towards charity. First, however, I need your estimate--what % of autism cases do you believe are related to vaccines? You can guesstimate, but if you have some data so much the better. Second, what do you mean by "nowhere near"? Within an order of magnitude?

Robert,
We welcome the facts you have provided on your wife's past financial interests. If you have training in statistics, however, it is not on display here. Autism rates among children born in the US in the late 1990s were approximately 1%, not 1 in 1000. Autism will be a lifelong disabling condition for most of these children. Comparing these rates to death/disability from infectious disease is a complex exercise and I don't know what method you have used, but I can guarantee you that the risk of lasting harm to children from the infectious diseases involved in the current childhood vaccination program is nowhere even close to the autism risk. Please don't embarrass yourself or insult our readers with blatantly false statements like these.

Not that I expect a fair discussion here, but I am the Oak Park resident who spoke out against the vaccine referendum in the Oak Leaves. I happen to work at Dominican University, though it was the Oak Leaves reporter that decided this was somehow relevant to my objections.

I'd like to correct the erroneous assertion made in the comments that my wife, Irina Calin-Jageman, is employed "to make and promote pharmaceuticals." This is not true.

Irina is a PhD in biology, currently employed at Dominican University. She has worked on a range of research topics, from RNA processing in bacterial phage to her most recent work on the molecular mechanisms of hereditary deafness. She's never been employed by a pharmaceutical, never contributed to research related to drug development, or helped promote pharmaceuticals. She was employed as a post-doctoral researcher at Emory University Medical School in the Department of Pharmacology in a lab that studies calcium-channel function.

Being a researcher in a pharmacology department does not mean that you make or promote drugs. Nor does it give you a financial conflict of interest with the operations of the pharmaceutical industry. Even a casual reading of the Scopus listing linked to for Irina would show that the poster's claims about this supposed conflict of interest are false.

My opposition to this referendum is not a 'planned assault due' due to fictitious financial ties from my wife. My speaking out against this referendum is neither ethically nor legally troubling. It is troubling though, to find this attempt to smear the credibility of both my wife and myself with this incompetent use of Scopus.

I am not a physician nor a pharmaceutical flac. I do have some expertise in statistics, so when we were expecting a child I did a lot of reading about vaccine safety. From weighing the evidence available, it was clear to me that the benefits of vaccines drastically outweigh their risks. Not only are vaccines not linked to autism, even if they were the prevalence of autism in the U.S. is still far below the combined previous prevalence of the deadly diseases controlled by vaccines. For example, the total lifetime risk of autism is currently 1 to 2 per 1000 (Newschaffer et al., 2007). For polio, however, infection rates in the U.S. reached 1/10,000 *per year* (Trevelyan et al., 2005). This would give a child the same cumulative risk for polio as autism in just the first 10 years of their life! Add in risks for other deadly diseases that we can vaccinate against, and the risks are much smaller with vaccines than without.

I'm sad that this evidence is not convincing to my fellow Oak Parkers, and I will continue to raise awareness about the overwhelming statistical evidence that vaccines have benefits that far outweigh their risks.

I don't expect this to change minds in this forum, but please don't smear my family with false accusations for speaking out about our beliefs.

I never understood why they never showed us the ingredients so to speak of the vaccines when I was younger. They do so for every other medicine they have ever given to us!

Every prescription I have ever picked up always had a booklet that listed ingredients and side effects, it was always automaticly included. So why are they SO against doing the same thing for vaccines?

Because they are hiding something, that's why!! If they were as confident in them as they act like they were, they would show you all the information like they do with the other medicines.

Or so this little thing called logic and common sense tells me.

We can't have that logic or common sense going around now, can we?! It's dangerous to the public health!!!

*rolls eyes*

I may be young, but I wasn't born yesterday, and my momma didn't raise no fool!!

"Oak Park Public Health Department officials opposed the referendum, as did Bob Calin-Jageman, an assistant professor of psychology at Dominican University, River Forest.

Both believed it would require doctors to release misleading information, thus reducing vaccination rates and jeopardizing public health.

Calin-Jageman said the initial study “linking autism to vaccination is now known to have been a fraud,” and that epidemiological evidence showed no link between thimerisol exposure and health problems such as autism.

He also stated thimerisol — a preservative that can be used to extend vaccine shelf life — had been removed from the vast majority of vaccines administered in the United States since 2002."

It appears this same professor is married to someone who works in Pharmacology and has an extensive conflict of interest on this topic, namely her job is to make and promote pharmaceuticals.

She also is a professor at Dominican. None of this was mentioned in the article, as it shows a bias and a financial rationale for his getting involved in this discussion (his wife makes money in that field and may also have direct funds from those companies that have or do produce and distribute vaccines).

The rest of his comments are incorrect and show a planned assault due to his wife's financial ties. That is morally, ethically and possibly legally wrong.

Good for Oak Town residents. It appears that their doctors may need to study vaccination components quite a bit more to actually provide informed consent.

I've heard before the rumor that patients have overheard pharma reps saying the form of mercury has been changed in vaccines before. It's there any actual formulaic basis for this or is it a misrepresentation of the issue of using methylmercury guidelines for ethylmercury toxicity or ?????? an outright lie?

I would like to know how they can justify not complying with this when the PEOPLE SPOKE! Last time I checked, this is a democracy we live in.

The internet is the medical establishment's biggest nightmare because it empowers people to share important information and educate themselves. The days of blindly following what your doctor says are over. When it comes to Autism, it is the parents that are the most knowledgeable. The doctors that do get it, have kids on the spectrum.

I would be happy to vaccinate my son if it can be proven by a 3rd party group with no financial interest or political agenda that the ingredients are safe. I don't want my son to get Whooping Cough or some other preventable disease, but I can't risk his Autism getting any worse by continuing to vaccinate.

Some day we will look back and see that vaccine damage is no different than the lead in paint and asbestos in our homes and buildings that were both perfectly acceptable and caused people to get extremely sick and even die.

If you have or know of children of an age that
They are being vaccinated. Or if you or those close to you
Get the flu vaccine, I strongly recommend that you get a very recently
Published book so that you can educate yourself of the concerns
of the parents responsible for the Oak Park ballot measure.
It may save you and those close to a lifetime of agony.

Have a lovely day

Paul Shapiro, grandfather to a vaccine damaged wonderful grandson!

Title: The Age Of Autism, Mercury, Medicine and a Man-Made Epidemic
Authors: Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill
jdeardorff@tribune.com; jjaworski@tribune.com

I don't know why some are complaining about this referendum? As I understand it .. all it does is "ask" health care providers to disclose the list of ingredients in vaccines and provide more information for each injection".

To me .. parents should not have to "ask" what ingredients are about to be injected into their children .. they should be voluntarily "told" by their pediatricians.

In addition .. I also think pediatricians have a duty to inform parents how many vaccines their child is going to receive in any single visit .. and .. I don't mean simply the "number" of shots.

Such as .. should a child receive BOTH .. Pediarix and Prevnar .. two "shots" .. in a single visit .. that child will have received vaccines for .. diptheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepititis B, and three strains of the polio virus. The Prevnar shot contains seven of the most common pneumococcal viruses (associated with spinal meningitis and other diseases)

As I understand it .. BOTH Pediarix and Prevnar have been known to be given to 4 month old babies.

Please .. any pediatrician who may be reading my comments .. TELL ME I AM WRONG.

Not only is that AAP spokesperson dismissive, they also just fell off a turnip truck. It's ethyl mercury, it's always been ethyl mercury and it's neurotoxic! We've got Light Beer and Light, filtered cigarettes and now they're gonna play the 'Mercury - Lite' game?